Friday, January 27, 2012

Beginning a Story

How does one begin a story? Not the opening paragraphs but the concept, the idea, the situation?

I am doing this now. I owe a story to a theme anthology, and all I have is the theme given to me by the editor (interstellar flight, done realistically). So far, these are the steps I've taken:

Find information about proposed interstellar craft. It turns out a whole raft of scientists have workable ideas on this (no STAR TREK dilithium crystals). The editor sent me some articles. Some I got from the Internet. That led me to order the book ENTERING SPACE (Robert Zubin), which arrived yesterday and constitutes today's reading. Do I usually do this much research for a short story? No. But I really want to be in this anthology, and anyway the topic interests me.

Read the material and mark up everything. Underlining for facts, notes in the margin for possible story ideas. This morning I waded through a technical article on lighting for agriculture aboard a long-term ship. Fortunately, I don't need to understand all the math.

If any ideas strike a genuine spark, stop research, write it down, and continue research in light of that idea. So far, this has not happened.

Go through a file I keep of interesting character sketches to see if any of them seem to mesh with my notes-for-an-idea-that-isn't-really-there-yet. Nope, nothing strikes me.

That's as far as I've gotten in the process. Let's hope a few more days produces a usable story idea. It has in the past, so I'm optimistic. They key criterion: I must be excited about the idea. Stay tuned.

To me, the most basic choice in such stories is -- generation ship or cold sleep, or a combination. It's difficult to avoid all the cliches associated with either choice, though I'm sure you'll surprise us, as usual!